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Ouch, my feelings, they hurt! But seriously, what opportunities are there in other services to fly some of their planes, fighter or not? I know of pilots from the Navy that have permanently transferred to the Air Force to fly our jets, sometimes even with a reduction in rank. The grass is always greener...

My household uses Chase Freedom Rewards Cards also. We put everything we can on there and always pay it off, netting a no-kidding $60-90 straight up refund per month. That's not chump change to me. I'd put my mortgage on there if I could.

Over the years the media has proven that they don't know the difference between a pilot and a WSO. All of the news I seen about this crash refers to the "two pilots". Now I ran across this article with the following excerpt: "A U.S. official said in Washington said the other crew member, a weapon systems officer who is also a pilot, was recovered by rebel forces and is now in American hands." Is there such a thing as a WSO who is also a pilot? Or is this article just twice as wrong?

I think one of the best ways to get rid of the vast swaths of unnecessary SNCO shoeclerks would be to get rid of combat pay for the Gulf bases, unless you're flying into country, of course. Why a deployed flying squadron needs a Shirt (with his own office, no less) I'll never know. In a perfect world, CZTE and combat pay would be prorated for only the amount of days you were actually in danger. Unfortunately it would be a huge admin headache, which I'm sure is why they don't do it that way. A couple days ago I went into finance at home station to take care of a lot of issues, one of which was to stop CZTE. I was told I need to present a copy of my orders and travel voucher to do so, even though I was standing right there, obviously no longer in a combat zone. (Yes, I was wrong & showed up unprepared.) It's pretty damn obvious that finance is task-saturated as it is.

Here's a harsh observation my crew came up with after a long day of watching the CAOC waste all of our gas. Those 19 guys with box cutters could not have imagined a better outcome. Not only did they succeed in bringing down the World Trade Center and part of the Pentagon, they sparked two wars that have cost the US a half-trillion dollars and thousands of lives. And no, I don't have any answers, except that we need to stay in AFG and stop wasting so much damned money. Also, I like the lasers idea. I can't ever remember people complaining that there were too many lasers around. My jet doesn't have any lasers on it, not a damned one, so maybe a change would do some good.

These days, assuming the tanker crew hadn't already called bingo 10K high and left country, would never even get close to the border for fear of getting instantly Q3d by Joe Biden himself (even the boom who was thoughtfully making pizza at the time) for encroaching upon the same "allied" airspace that they were just legally transiting through a few hours ago. If the tanker could manage to coordinate through Wizard with people thousands of miles away to forgo the important mission of refueling Wizard, they might get cleared to take the blatantly more important tasking, assuming they didn't have to consolidate from a 135 that would otherwise have to dump fuel to land. For the joinup, the tanker pilots would be eyes inside dealing with some random system fault, thus unknowingly starting a low-SA turn into the fighter at 6 miles, not helped by the fighter strangling his squawk and yardstick to keep that very thing from happening. As the fighter lag-rolls into the contact position, the boom is still going through his checklist and the engineer is using spaghetti charts to calculate what speeds they can fly and how much gas they can give. Which sucks because they've both been asleep for the past hour with nothing to do. The fighter would call nosecoldswitchessafetailnumber6900003432201 and promptly fire off a flare while trying to plug himself. Yes, that actually happened a week ago. The fighter pilot would spend the rest of the RTB complaining about the sun being in his eyes and the tanker pilots would fix the problem (maybe on purpose) by flying through clouds and moderate-high turbulence. Everybody's and fighter aft-disconnects himself and leaves without saying a word. The tanker crew goes home and never debriefs anything while the fighter pilot spends six hours recreating the entire event from memory on a whiteboard. Three years later all the pilots are reunited at Creech while the boom and engineer have logged 12 more deployments. PA ignores the entire story, instead focusing on the Wing CC giving an award to some guy that installs air conditioners. Also actually happened a week ago. I think I got it all. Also, this excerpt is the epitome of awesome: Olds, who had been chasing the first MiG, gave up a chance for a kill to run off the three that were after Catton's plane. "Here he came, lobbing missiles over my head at the MiGs," Catton said. The MiGs high-tailed it, with Olds in pursuit. Robin Olds chasing three MiGs off into the sunset. That guy was a comic book superhero.

Really? People leave as copliots to go back to UPT? That sucks. At least they can be the AC there...

Camouflage doesn't make you invisible, it just reduces the distance at which you can be seen. Yeah, you can ID an American in a foreign country from 50 yards (farther if we're in a conversation about airplanes or spouting Dumb and Dumber quotes), but you can see an Blue Bird from a half mile, and you know it's filled with targets. I don't know, I'm just talking out of my ass. But it makes sense to me. Try to blend in as much as possible and don't make it a turkey shoot for assholes like this. Make him spend more time looking for targets during which time he may do something to get caught.

And a blue jean jacket, just to be safe.

I don't think it's out of the question to ask why the AF insists on shuttling people around on Big Blue buses. Each year we get bombarded with CBTs and briefings about how not to stand out in public areas while traveling. Then they put 40 of these inconspicuous airmen onto a big, blue American-made school bus and park it out in front of an foreign airport. Do they even sell those things in other countries? Better yet, are we actually buying them in America and then hauling the damn things across the world?

Kindles could be pretty good for pubs only, plus they're a lot cheaper. But I'd assume they're a lot harder to program stuff for. I think this is where a lot of people are missing the huge potential of the iPad. WE (the aircrew) could create whatever we feel like we need for the mission. There are a lot of smart, creative people in the AF that have to rely on contractors to make shitty computer programs that cost millions, both on the ground and in the air. Even if one of us wrote the world's best PC program, good luck getting the comm squadron to install it on a computer. If it's not a spreadsheet it won't happen. There's a lot of potential things the iPad could quickly and easily calculate while airborne: moving maps (or charts), killbox coordinates, divert fuel, frag fuel, a NEAREST function, ETPs, TOLD (heaven forbid), weight & balance, 781s, MARs, etc. None of which my current aircraft can do on its own. Sad but true. Someone has reportedly already found a workable mounting bracket for my aircraft that installs without screws. Either way would work, though I could see my arm always hitting the kneeboard and changing the screen at just the wrong time. There is an idea for separate "Secret" iPads with wifi disabled and the requisite stickers. Heavy guys would need them in the desert but not really anywhere else. Current pubs bags do not (usually) include porn. iPad could possibly. Case closed.

Voted your post up simply because of your login name. But otherwise, yeah, we'd still have to carry 100lbs of pubs to the jets. I think the biggest issue with the iPad is battery life. Does anybody have a realistic lifetime between charges? Could it last for an 18 hour sortie?

The big benefit is the extremely low cost. A new iPad costs about $600 whereas the same capability in a MFD would cost, what, $50,000? I think the kneeboard thing for the Herc costs about $5,000. For that price you could buy plenty of iPads to replace broken ones. Plus, the iPad is actually customizable by the user, unlike everything else ever purchased by the DOD. My base has been working on getting them for about a year. I think they wanted to get them below the radar before too many higher-ups could get their inputs in and slow things down. Maybe too late. I've generally only heard of iPads being considered for the jets on which coffee is consumed. It would be kind of silly in a fighter.

This State Department press conference on 25 Feb says the evacuation 250-270 people by ferry and 41 people by aircraft was complete. According to the article above, on the 26th the British still had 300 people left in the desert near Benghazi waiting on a frigate to pick them up. The Libyan government had lost control of Benghazi somewhere around the 25th plus or minus a few days. According to the BBC, the British evacuation is complete as of 28 Feb. Not sure if the Canadians have gotten their guys out yet. It looks like the Brits somehow managed to move everybody from Tripoli to rebel-held Benghazi on the ground so they could be evacuated by the military. The US went a different route and chartered a ship and aircraft to remove people straight out of Tripoli. I'm sure the British and American operations were massively difficult to put together and I don't really fault either. I'm sure there were minor screwups and delays as always, but as far as I'm aware the only foreigners killed have been African mercs. Sounds like successful to me.

Pretty sure the "Clemons" one is photoshopped. Somebody just swapped the "on" and "s". Otherwise, those tats are rad.

"The gratitude of every home in our Island, in our Empire, and indeed throughout the world, except in the abodes of the guilty, goes out to the British airmen who, undaunted by odds, unwearied in their constant challenge and mortal danger, are turning the tide of the World War by their prowess and by their devotion. Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few. All our hearts go out to the fighter pilots, whose brilliant actions we see with our own eyes day after day…" Winston Churchill 20 Aug 1940 Even platitudes as strong as this will eventually fade away as those who were actual witnesses to such heroism slowly die off. The hard lessons learned will eventually disappear in time, as they have for thousands of years. I know times are different now, and these are "only" trainees, but you can't screw people over that harshly and expect the best recruits to keep coming back. It seems like the RAF, as well as our own Air Force, only knows how to treat these pipelines like an on/off switch. Someone please tell me what other organization in the world would use that method to put the best people in the right places...

He's also missing a requisite diving badge that CCTs wear. Also, do CCTs always wear combat boots with blues or do they sometimes wear the regular shoes? I can't believe someone who's in the current active duty military would do this - especially a guy who works around the flying community.

So is the purple light in the intake a photographer-placed effect to make it look more menacing? Or did they just leave the cover off the onboard Blu-Ray player?

Exactly, the people with the most time on their hands will spend the most time writing PRFs. Which leaves a bunch of Ops guys turning in "below average" PRFs. Hopefully whoever looks at these things can see the big picture and apply some common sense to the process.

Because that would instantly put ALL the journalists at even greater risk than they already are. Similar to why we don't abuse the Red Cross symbol in the same way. Disguising oneself as a noncombatant and then opening fire is generally a tactic reserved for the OTHER side.

"In Soviet Russia, North Koreans defect to YOU!" But seriously, what the hell is a late-model MiG-23?

As another new guy, I'd like to know as well. It seems like for every 06 and above there's half a dozen guys whose only job is preparing briefings for their boss. Not to mention when said DV decides to take a stroll around base and every office comes to a complete standstill to Windex the desks and put on reflector belts. After which, of course, the DV is running late and decides to skip the base tour and go play golf instead. Streamlining the command structure seems like a good idea to me. Unless the idea is to provide redundancy in case of a nuclear war. That I could understand, but something tells me it wasn't by design.

Agreed that the AB in right eng didn't light. In picture 2 the exhaust gas looks a lot more prominent out of the left eng, while in picture 3 the flamethower effect coming out of the left is probably caused by the AB shooting fuel into a suddenly slow exhaust stream. Never seen it before so that's my guess.

That's actually one of the most worthwhile things you or anybody else has written on this board. I'm going to write that on my mirror 80's style so I can reality check myself every day. I can't even begin to tally the number of people I know, including myself, who feel the need to rest on their laurels. As they say in motorsports, you're only as good as your last race.

HPV, I like that one! Because once you get it you can't get rid of it, or, um, uh, so I'm told...